Does he mean: The games will be as before, but we will sell the cinematics by themselves in addition to the regular game? If so, why the hell not? I'm not stupid enough to pay for something like that, but I'm sure there are many who are.

Or does he mean: Games will be just games with all the cinematics deleted, that you must buy in addition to buying the game to get the whole story? If so...my god....there really is no bounds...DIAF Bobby.

Reading the article he states that the fans will pay to watch somthing they've already seen in the game.

I assume he's not on about some Frankenstein stitching the scenes together at the seams because the average games cut-scenes run something like:

So I'm going to presume the greedy son-of-a-*insert bad greedy thing here* is planning to make some short films and cut hunks out to put into games. If the film ever became the focus though then the game would be shite.

yes and no...I would not want to watch a cut screen again for the priverlage to see it on the big screen...I guess there would have to be a few extra scenes added so that the screen shots are not just a conclution and start of a fire fight. If that was the case it would be boring.

But I would not be surprised if they went out and made compleat stand alown movies using there ingame engins.

While the idea as it's presented here is shit, I would really like to see more cut-scene quality movies (real movies)game related or not. All the animated stuff is cartoony with a minor list of exceptions. A perfect example of what I'm talking about is Advent Children. I don't care if you like the film or not, I'm talking visual style. There's no denying that Starcraft 2 (at least from the trailers, as I'm not a big RTS-er) would fit this level of visual effect. Now stop trying to rape my wallet with a bad idea and try to do so with a good one, please. Or at least one I agree with.

I am more concerned about what this idea may lead to, I mean its no big deal if its just the already released games... its when they start to tailor games they release specifically to support this exploitation.

Can almost see it now, low quality or small sized cutscenes in the game and a week later a DvD/BluRay of high quality cutscenes complete with a guide / installation package to insert the quality ones into your game.

... can even see the slogan: " Buy the cutscenes and get the complete gaming experience ( music and audio packs also available, each track sold seperately , subject to terms and conditions ) "

Ah well, its not like these days gamers will be bothered... they will simply open thier wallets even more, and take this new exploitation just as easily as they have accepted all the others.

"For starters, our virtual characters don't have agents, they don't have managers, they don't have lawyers."

But voice actors do, Bobby. And they will probably start demanding a larger chunk of the cut if you do this.

Not only is this starting to crossover into tie-orphans-to-the-railroad-tracks evil, the plan is about as well thought out as an underpants gnome scheme.

Well I imagine this plan of his will fail, he'll waste a shit load or money and then he'll blame the gamers for it. The fact is, safe for a few hardcore fans, no gamer is really going to care... Well not enough to go and pay to watch it. Why does he think that gamers will really fork out money to watch something they already watched in the video game?.

ASnogarD:I am more concerned about what this idea may lead to, I mean its no big deal if its just the already released games... its when they start to tailor games they release specifically to support this exploitation.

Can almost see it now, low quality or small sized cutscenes in the game and a week later a DvD/BluRay of high quality cutscenes complete with a guide / installation package to insert the quality ones into your game.

... can even see the slogan: " Buy the cutscenes and get the complete gaming experience ( music and audio packs also available, each track sold seperately , subject to terms and conditions ) "

Ah well, its not like these days gamers will be bothered... they will simply open thier wallets even more, and take this new exploitation just as easily as they have accepted all the others.

You needn't worry. Doing some thing like this would single-handedly kill the video game industry. Only a collect few would pay for that sort of thing... The rest wouldn't give a shit and I imagine a good amount of boycotting would happen. They'd just waste a good amount of money...

Im not sure what to make of this, im not going to buy cutscenes if i have the game, the cutscene is a reward for beating the level as far as i am concerned....

If i don't have the game im not going to buy the cutscenes for it because i won't have invested in the characters by playing the game to care enough about the cutscenes.

The only way i see it working is if the cinematic narrative of games is complimented with new footage that compensates for the story being told via gameplay, in short a movie with a beginning, middle and end with you seeing the action in the game unfolding rather than the cutscenes talking about what had just taken place in a computer game.

Also one thing Activison should be aware of... Computer gaming is a storytelling medium in its own right and because of the interactive nature of the narrative and how its physically driven forward by gamers/viewers the characters within such storytelling methods would be different to the type of characters you view in a film.

You embody a computer game character, you empathise with a film character. A computer game character generally only needs one liners, whereas a film character needs a fully rounded and well written dialogue and backstory to make them interesting enough for you to watch for 90 minutes.

Im sure there is some merit in the idea for hardcore fans, but the price range of 20 - 30 dollars is far far far too much. i'd be hard pushed to pay 5 for something i can earn and enjoy more in a computer game.

I've heard Kotick also plans to extract all the text lines from games, to sell as novels (60$ per chapter, just like Starcraft II), and open an art gallery of screenshots (60$ entrance fee, 15$ extra to see screenshots of actual gameplay, 15$ more for a map-pack of the gallery).

Frozen Donkey Wheel2:OK, I'm sure by now this page has been flooded with quite dramatic posts talking about greed, stupidity, the evil nature of Activision/Kotick, and maybe even the decline of videogames. But what those people are forgetting is that you don't have to buy it. It's not like if you don't buy the cutscene movie, you miss a part of the game. He's not forcing people to pay extra for anything, he's not taking away from videogames, he's not forcing you to buy it for a completer(Wait, that's a word?.....WHAT?) experience. He's merely providing a stupid package for stupid people to buy so that they can claim themselves as bigger fans of "Franchise A" then the guy across the street. It's nothing new, and companies that make just about anything and everything have been doing it for decades.

Well... you do have a point, but this is the best case scenario. Call me paranoid, but assuming this hare-brained scheme goes up, there will still be the same content online. On Youtube. For free. The logical next step would be to "eliminate the competition", so to speak, which is as simple as filing a copyright-claim thingy to Youtube- making them the only providers of said content. Like I said, this could be mere speculation, but its cause for concern.

Mortons4ck:Not only is this starting to crossover into tie-orphans-to-the-railroad-tracks evil, the plan is about as well thought out as an underpants gnome scheme.

I would argue that this isn't actually evil at all. Instead, it's completely amoral. Good and evil don't enter into it in any way, just whether or not it can make more money. The underpants gnome part is spot on, though. Even if it's not an evil idea, it sure seems like a stupid one that's not likely to work very well in the form his announcement seems to be presenting it. On the other hand, if it is successful, I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to hate him for doing it anywhere near as much as the people who are dumb enough to buy it.

I wonder if Kotick has heard the expression eating your seed corn... because it really seems like he doesn't get it, there is such as thing as over monetising a product, you can only milk a cow so much before it kicks you.

I read the headline:"Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has laid out plans to package the in-game cinematics from games like StarCraft and sell them as movies."

and loled... "there's Kotick at it again trying to make money from everything"

then I opened the article and saw the SCII screenshot and remembered: actually, yes, if you make an hour or two long movie like the PRE-RENDERED cutscenes in SCII, I WILL BUY IT.

I would totally buy that! its half the reason I bought starcraft 2! (underwhelming story not withstanding).

it has to be of the quality of the pre rendered stuff though! no palming off those in game rendered cutscenes!

also, while the POTENTIAL of the starcraft universe is great, you still have to put some work into it making it into a movie, you CAN NOT just literally string all the cutscenes together and sell that as a movie.

Goddamn Bobby, you are a freaking genius. Just when I think you couldn't think of anymore ways to make money of suckers...I mean gamers, you just have to prove me wrong. I support this idea 110%. I mean now I won't have to play games to get through the whole story. I can spend $20-30 (what is that, £15-£24?) and a little bit extra for popcorn and drink and everything will be awesome :D

Please Bobby, run for President and during your conference speech say "Greed is good". Because we all know, Bobby Kotick is the Gordon Gekko of the Video Games Industry.

Hmm, seeing as how I don't like playing RTS games (and thusly have no interest in playing Starcraft 2), I would like to see a movie made out of the cutscenes. If they took the cut-scenes, added a little something to connect them all together (since you are missing parts of the story by not playing) and make a real feature film out of it, then hell yeah, I would buy it. I love sci-fi movies and Blizzard cinematics are of surreal quality.

The price would of course depend on how much effort they put into it. HD-DTS sound and HD picture is something that I would like to see.

And stop acting like Bobby Kotick is always the greedy bastard, Blizzard is every bit as bad as he is.